ALBIGENSES, the usual designation of the heretics—and more especially the Catharist heretics—of the south of France in the i2th and i3th centuries. This name appears to have been given to them at the end of the i2th century, but the designation is hardly exact, for the centre of the movement was at Toulouse and in the neighbouring districts rather than at Albi (the ancient Albiga). The heresy, which had penetrated into these regions probably by trade routes, came originally from eastern Europe. The name of Bulgarians (Bougres) was often applied to the Albigenses, and they always kept up intercourse with the Bogomil sectaries of Thrace. Their dualist doctrines, as described by controversialists, present numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils (q.v.), and still more to those of the Paulicians, with whom they are sometimes connected. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to form any very precise idea of the Albigensian doc trines, as our knowledge of them is derived from their opponents, and the very rare texts which have come down to us, emanating from the Albigenses (e.g., the Rituel cathare de Lyon, ed. by Cunitz, Jena, 1852, and the Nouveau Testament en provencal, ed. by Cledat, Paris, 1887), contain very inadequate information concerning their metaphysical principles and moral practice. What is certain is that, above all, they formed an anti-sacerdotal party in permanent opposition to the Roman Church, and raised a continued protest against the corruption of the clergy of their time. The Albigensian theologians and ascetics, the Cathari or perfecti, known in the south of France as bons hommes or bons chretiens, were few in number; the mass of believers (credentes) were perhaps not initiated into the Catharist doctrine; at all events they were free from all moral prohibition and all religious obligation, on condition that they promised by an act called con venenza to become "hereticized" by receiving the consolamentum, the baptism of the Spirit, before their death or even in extremis.
The first Catharist heretics appeared in Limousin between lot 2 and 1020. Protected by William IX., duke of Aquitaine, and soon by a great part of the southern nobility, the movement gained ground in the south, and in the Council of Toulouse in vain ordered the secular powers to assist the ecclesiastical authority in quelling the heresy. The people were attached to the bons hommes, whose asceticism and anti-sacerdotal preach ing impressed the masses, and the movement maintained vigorous activity for another hundred years, until Innocent III. ascended the papal throne. At first he tried pacific conversion; but his envoys had to contend not only with the heretics, the nobles who protected them and the people who listened to them and ven erated them, but also with the bishops of the district, who re jected the extraordinary authority which the pope had conferred upon his legates. At last (12og) the pope ordered the Cistercians to preach the crusade against the Albigenses. This implacable war, which threw the whole of the nobility of the north of France against that of the south, and destroyed the brilliant Provencal civilization, ended, politically, in the Treaty of Paris 0229), which destroyed the independence of the princes of the south, but did not extinguish the heresy, in spite of the wholesale massacres of heretics during the war. The Inquisition, however, operating unremittingly in the south at Toulouse, Albi and other towns during the whole of the i3th century and a great part of the i4th, succeeded in crushing it. There were indeed some out bursts of rebellion, some fomented by the nobles of Languedoc (124o-42) and others emanating from the people of the towns, who were embittered by confiscations and religious persecutions, but the repressive measures were terrible. In 1245, the royal officers assisting the Inquisition seized the heretical citadel of Montsegur, and 200 Cathari were burned in one day. Moreover, the Church decreed severe chastisement against all laymen suspected of sympathy with the heretics (Council of Narbonne, 1235; Bull Ad extirpanda, 1252).
Hunted down by the Inquisition and now abandoned by the nobles of the district, the Albigenses became more and more scattered, hiding in the forests and mountains, and only meeting surreptitiously. The sect, moreover, was exhausted and could find no more adepts in a district which, by fair means or foul, had arrived at a state of peace and political and religious unity. BIBLIOGRAPHY.—See C. Schmidt's Histoire de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois (1849), which is still the most important work on the subject. On the ethics of the Catharists, see Jean Guiraud, Questions d'histoire et d'archeologie chritienne (1906) ; and P. Alphandery, Les idies morales chez les heterodoxes latins au debut du XIlle siecle (19°3). See also under CATHARS.